This
interview took place in a dressing room backstage at Victoria University
of Wellington's Memorial Theatre on February 28th, 2002. Neil's
wife Yvonne and tour agent Doug Hunter pop in occasionally, and
sitting in the background being very quiet is Grant's friend Peter
Baillie.
GRANT
BUIST: -Because my shorthand is frankly as bad as my longhand…I'll
just put this here. I've prepared you a bunch of-
NEIL INNES: Hang on…
(Neil paces around the room trying to find the source
of the piped music)
GB: It's the Cherry Poppin' Daddies…
NI: Oh well, if you're happy with it.
GB: No, I'm fine, I'm very broadminded. I liked the little duck-shaped
bubble-blower.
NI: They gave it to me last year when I went
to Japan.
GB: So it's been recently added to the act? I was going to ask you
about Quacksie. It's not the original Quacksie, is it?
NI: No, how did you know that? From the Internet?
GB:It has to be customised, doesn't it? It has the bottom cut off…
NI: It comes with little black wheels on it
and a string. You pull it along and have a really good time.
GB: So when did you decide to stick it on your head?
NI: Well, I don't know. It occurred to me
about the time of the second Bonzo's album 'The Doughnut In Granny's
Greenhouse' and we wanted to do a booklet again, we all had to do
our own pages, and I wanted to be this kind of superhero called
NormalMan, and I got the tights and the outside swimming trunks
and the T-shirt and the boots, and it needed something to finish
it off.
GB: That would have finished it off.
NI: Yeah, I got into
Woolworth's, and I saw rows and rows of these Quacksies, and I thought
"Bloody hell, what an image" for a start, and I suddenly
looked at them and thought "Hang on, if I cut the wheels off,
it'll make a hat.". I don't know where the idea -
GB: You didn't think years later it would get lost or stolen, and
you'd have to hunt down another one…
NI: I know. It was bizarre,
because it was just before Monty Python did the Hollywood Bowl,
and we'd been to Canada, and Air Canada had lost my case with the
duck in it, and the Python office got onto Woolworth's and said
"Where are your Quacksies?" "We haven't got any Quacksies."
"But you had Quacksies". New York Head Office denying
they ever had Quacksies…
GB: It sounds like a kind of drug code, doesn't it?
NI: I've just been sent
another one …this nutter called Ken Thornton, who's a really
good guitarist, actually. I got him up on stage last time in Chicago,
to play, and he came over to England to do some Rutles shows as
well. But he bid for this Quacksie on Ebay… (laughs)
They're collector's items! He sent it to me, so I've got a pristine
Quacksie…
GB: You can keep it in reserve for the next twenty years.
NI: I think as I get on in life I ought to
leave the duck behind…
GB: Is it valuable because it's a classic toy, or because you wear
it on your head?
NI: (laughs)
I wouldn't know.
GB: It's probably best not to ask.
NI: It's turning into a bit of an albatross,
actually.
GB: How the hell did you get it through customs? You can't even
get a boxcutter through customs nowadays, how did you get a duck?
NI: Well, it was just shipped in the props
case.
GB: They would have thought it was drugs paraphernalia.
NI: Probably. But actually none of my bags
bear close examination. There's red noses, there's wigs…
GB: If you had a video camera they'd think you'd been making
some very strange movies. I wanted to ask you some questions about
Dadaism…
NI: Oh, God!
GB: Look, you're in a bloody university, I'm going to ask you some
questions about Dadaism…
NI: Fair enough, fair enough…
GB: How were you introduced to Dadaism? Was it through school?
NI: Well, because I
went to art school… I spent five years in art school altogether.
I was at Norwich Art School for two years, then I went to Goldsmiths
College in London which became quite infamous later on because of
McLaren, the Sex Pistols bloke…
GB: He strikes me as the sort of person the Bonzos would have beaten
up in the corridors…
NI: No, I had a hand
in organising a dance which ended up in dances being banned for
two years! (laughs) Well, we had a good time in the Sixties, we
did…We were all in the Bonzos, we were keen on Duchamp and
things like that, and drawing mustaches on Mona Lisas and things
like that. I used to paint Mona Lisas a lot. I've got a leather
flying jacket at home with Mona Lisa painted on the back. I've got
a bowler hat -with what looks likes a bird dropping painted on it,
but it's a Mona Lisa.
GB: I've just read a book full of artist's reinterpretation's of
the Mona Lisa…
NI: There is one, yeah. But Duchamp was also
a sensible painter too -his 'Nude Descending a Staircase' was revolutionary.
GB: Even if you can't quite work out what way it goes up until someone
explains it to you…
NI: Actually I'm thinking about starting painting
again and I'm going to do a parody -
GB: Oh my God! Please don't do what David Bowie did and start designing
wallpaper!
NI: No no no! I won't! I'm still into Dada-
GB: You're allowed to, because you're an art student, but please
don't design wallpaper…
NI: No, no, I won't, but Marcel Duchamp's
'Nude Descending a Staircase', I want to do a parody of it , but
I want it to be a convict with arrows on it, and maybe a metal ball
and a chain, and I'm going to call it 'Con Descending Staircase'
(laughs) Boom Boom!
GB: I've always thought of Quacksie as being a Readymade.
NI: It is! Absolutely! It's a bug, actually,
once you get into the visual things, you find you don't share it
with everybody, because many people are untroubled by doubt and
they don't really look at things. Although it's quite amazing in
London at the moment -the Tate Modern…I think people may be
coming for the building because it's an extraordinary space…it's
an old power station -
GB: With a huge interior.
NI: Yeah. The Royal Academy Exhibition, millions
of people are turning up, so maybe people are turning to art . But
it's also media fun because of the Brit Art brigade, the Damien
Hirsts…
GB: The Tracey Emins…
NI: And the Tracey Emins… yeah, they
wind up the media, and they get the colonels writing in saying "This
is an absolute shower, what a waste of awards"…
GB: There's been a backlash against them generally, hasn't there?
NI: There is, 'course there is, because it's
just like everything else, it's a bit like transient pop.
GB: What did you think of Freud's painting of the Queen?
NI: I liked it!
GB: It's not bad, is it?
NI: I thought it was terrific! I think he's
one of our greatest painters…
GB: I think the problem is whenever anyone paints the Queen they
get criticised for using use too much of the colour purple…If
they just left that colour out and made it look like a stamp -but
where'd be the fun in that?
NI: Mind you, there was a great photograph
in the paper the other day, in the Auckland Herald, with the Queen
meeting a sniper -did you see it? This great outfit he's got, with
a lot of false straw on his head and in fatigues -a sniper! "Do
you find it interesting? Shooting people to death in the head from
a long distance? With a Walter PPK capable of taking the head off
a chicken at five miles?
GB: I was wondering, how did the Bonzos get on with the Mothers
of Invention? Was there any competition?
NI: Great, though Zappa was a bit aloof. We
played in Los Angeles and they all came down, and the rest of the
band, we went up to Laurel Canyon and partied. But Frank didn't
even say hello to anybody. He sort of came in and checked the opposition
and left.
GB: Weren't they once called a Californian version of the Bonzos?
NI: Well, that would annoy Zappa intensely.
I'd have swapped. I'd have joined the Mothers of Invention, because
I wanted to do more composition, things like that. To get the Bonzos
to apply themselves to anything like that…I mean, we got a
little way into it with a thing called 'Rhinocratic Oaths', but
it was too much like hard work for them.
GB: I think if you'd done that, you would have ended up like Brian
Eno in Roxy Music. He couldn't have stood a rival focus in the group…
NI: I know, but I wouldn't have minded pinching
his band.
GB: I found myself describing you to a 19 year old today. I said
"I'm going to meet Neil Innes", and I ended up-
NI: Who?
GB: After that -this is several minutes later in the same conversation
-I found myself trying to tell her who Mike Oldfield was-
NI: Oh, right.
GB: -Because I was trying to tell her who Vivian Stanshall was.
I heard them playing 'Tubular Bells'
NI: I heard that…You know when the Bonzos
were making their last album 'Let's Make Up and Be Friendly'…
GB: That was your contractual obligation album, wasn't it?
NI: Well, the Pythons nicked that…we
did that down at The Manor, Richard Branson's residential studio.
Tom Newman was the engineer, and Mike Oldfield was the teaboy.
GB: Really?
NI: And he was making 'Tubular Bells' when
we were in the studio, and we were supposed to go down there for
a fortnight, and they were having teething problems with the studio,
so Richard said "Well, look, just stay there until you've finished
it", and so we were down there for five weeks.
GB: I always wondered -do you think it would have been terrible
to have done your great work when you were 19? I mean, he's done
a lot of great stuff, but really…
NI: Yeah, I know but-
GB: What were you doing when you were 19? Were you still a student?
NI: I was still painting, yeah.
GB: Do you think you would have liked who you are now?
NI: I haven't compromised
much, you know. Even in show business I've been the one to say,
leave all that fame and celebrity to those who enjoy it. I've never
enjoyed it -that part of it. And that's why, in many ways, I was
good friends with George Harrison for many years because Yvonne
is a garden designer, and she's been working on the garden down
there for ten years or more…
GB: The big famous one?
NI: Yeah, we hang out afterwards in the evening
and look at videos of garden centres…that's what it's come
to. George wasn't interested in celebrity fame either.
GB: He didn't have a choice though, did he?
NI: No, he didn't have a choice, and that's
the awful thing. You know, it's much more fun being a Rutle than
a Beatle, because it's not real…but that was real for them.
It was frightening and horrendous, to be that close to seeing what
it can do and the pain it causes. It's stupid, if I am in the business
of going in public and entertaining, I ought to make some effort
to make myself known (laughs) but I can't really. I'd rather bumble
along as I am.
GB: Do you think the Beatles were grateful in the late Seventies
for the Rutles, because it took pressure off them reforming?
NI: Yes, Ringo liked it until the bit where
Leggy Mountbatten goes off to Australia. Neil Aspinall and George
arranged for Eric and I to see footage they had already, which became
'Anthology', and we thought, this is great, the riots and everything,
and then Leggy dies, and then the whole thing …it's not entertaining!
It's too real and it's too soon. It did defuse it, telling the story
in that cack handed way. And getting people like Mick Jagger to
come in and just change the names…
GB: That was fantastic…
NI: It was one of those things where everyone
knew what to do. It felt right at the time. We didn't need a script,
everyone used the story. All you had to do was deny the Beatles
ever existed, and this was the Rutles.
GB: You'd been recording 'Archaeology' for some years before 'Anthology',
hadn't you?
NI: To a degree -it
was '94. We made that it in a couple of months, 'Archaeology'. But
the thing was, that outtake of 'We've Arrived! (And To Prove It
We're Here)' was from the first album. The first album was made
in ten days, but we rehearsed for two weeks in this house in Hendon
with two revoxs, two two-track machines. We just did that one as
a muck about. It was one take, all that silly laughing and whatnot,
we thought because the Beatles are releasing everything on 'Anthology',
this is heaven sent! Just dig out those rehearsal tapes, the Rutles
have got some stuff in the cupboard as well.
GB: I have to say, I cracked up the first time I saw a photo
of Ricky Fataar with the Beach Boys. I so wasn't expecting that.
Even when you were singing that particular song -it's the Rutles
version of a Beatles version of a Beach Boys song -it's so circular.
NI: Which one?
GB: The chorus of 'We've Arrived! (And To Prove It We're Here)'
when you start going into the 'wheee-oo'
NI: Well, that was supposed to be a bit like
'Flying', you remember that? 'Lahh, lah lah lah lah…"
GB: I thought the chorus was like 'Back In the USSR'…
NI: We were trying to
make seagull noises as well -'Caw, caw caw' -just like that. Stupid.
But Ricky was in the Beach Boys before he became a Rutle. When we
did the video in New York for 'Shangri-La', Al Jardine turned up
in sandals and shorts and said "Ricky, I didn't know you were
a Rutle" (laughs). He was so spaced out…
GB: You often get asked in interviews about the Sixties… do
you sometimes feel like you're being held up as some kind of pundit?
Someone Who Was There?
NI: Yeah, I happen to think we were very lucky
to be young in the Sixties.
GB: You went to a lot of really good parties, you knew all these
people…
NI: Think of it in terms of your peer group.
Imagine there was no pressure when you left college -which job would
you like? It was like that. Not only that, your older brother probably
had to go into National Service. We all escaped it by a year or
two. So there's all these young people on the street, there was
the music to play, and it was just fantastic! Nobody knew shit from
shinola, they were just doing whatever you did, and you found out
the hard way. Some did.
GB: I'm actually getting jealous now.
NI: But what can you do about it?
GB: It's gone…
NI: It was a fantastic time…I'm working
on some radio shows at the moment, I've got one character called
'Old Man With Dog Who Remembers the Sixties' (laughter).The daft
thing is, though, when the Bonzos were going down to flea markets
and getting these silly old 78s to take back and listen to, there
we were in the Sixties looking back at the Thirties , having a laugh
at what people were having a laugh at then. Really, there ought
to be more people in the Noughties, or whatever they are now, looking
back to the Sixties and Seventies and taking the piss out of that.
I mean, the music's far too po-faced, isn't it, shoegazing and image
conscious…
PETER BAILLIE (who has been very quiet up
till now, basking in Neil's aura): I very much enjoyed the 'Hitch-Haiku'
song…
GB: Yes, new material…
PB: That was an example of a song that probably
came first lyrically-
NI: Yeah.
PB: Do you have any particular technique for
writing a song?
GB: (laughs) It's like "Where do you get your ideas from?"
NI: Someone once said
to Ira Gershwin, "Mr Gershwin, which comes first, the lyrics
or the melody?" And he said, "Usually the contract".
But it works both ways for me. Sometimes you get a line with a tune,
and you have to work out the chords to it, and the lyrics come very
quickly -'Urban Spacemen' was written in an afternoon. I wrote the
lyrics to 'How Sweet To Be An Idiot' on the bus with Grimms. I'd
written the first line 'how sweet to be an idiot', because something
had happened the night before in the hotel -we'd come back from
the gig and then walked into a lift, with all these people in evening
dress and ball gowns, and I was wearing something stupid, I suppose,
and they said "Excuse me, what does it feel going around looking
like an idiot?'. What the hell do you think you look like? So I
started to think about, what's wrong with being an idiot? So I had
the first verse, and Brian Patten, the poet, was sitting behind
me…
GB: Oh God, the Merseyside bunch.
NI: Brian's brilliant. He looked over and
says "Worrya youse doin?" and he picks my pad up, and
read 'How sweet to be an idiot / as harmless as a cloud…"
and I was thinking "what comes next?" and he went "and
dip my brain in joy". Thanks, Brian! I'm off!
GB: Where did you get your appreciation of language from?
NI: I just love it. I trust words completely.
They're wonderful, they're slippery.
GB: Do you think the Bonzos would have been different if you'd done
English degrees?
NI: I don't know. I
started out as a seven year old learning the piano, but got to about
14 and wondered who I was working for, because you'd finish a hard
Chopin polonaise and they'd give you a harder one. -"Wait a
minute!" So I got a guitar and started to teach myself that,
and started writing my own music. Then the lure of the painting
took over, and it was only because we were all strapped for cash,
you know, students, that I joined up with the band. We used to rehearse
at the Royal College of Art canteen, and it was Vernon and I had
the idea that , because we had to go so far, and we'd found this
pub in South London, "why don't we play in a bloody pub?".
That's what kicked it off. We started putting the hat around, and
then the landlord would pay us to come, because it would pack the
place out. We'd play five pubs a week! So…where's this question
gone to?
GB: No no, it's interesting…
NI: So we started writing our own songs, and
when you start writing song lyrics, you really get interested in
words, and working with the poets as well. I was putting music to
some of Brian's poems, so I really began to see the economy and
power of words.
GB: I have to say that I was disappointed you didn't sing 'Shangri-La',
because, other people have told you this, their favourite lyric
of yours is the opening lines.
NI: "Did you ever get the feeling / That
the truth is less revealing / Than a downright lie". I don't
know what to do, really. My feeling is that not too many people
down this way know the Rutles. 
GB: That audience tonight, I think you could have gotten them singing
the coda at the end, like on 'Archaeology'.
NI: "Lah-dee-doo-dah, lah-dee-dah…"
GB: You could have gotten them doing that.
NI: In Dunedin, the first night, I did an
hour and thirty-five minutes. It was far too long.
GB: Really?
NI: Yeah, I've been cutting it back.
GB: It was a good audience tonight.
NI: It was a lovely
audience. They were good in Dunedin. I had one mad heckling woman
who came up when I had the mustache on -I didn't do it tonight because
I get fur up there, you see -I've got the mustache on for John Paul
Satire , and she said "Take the mustache off" and I said
"Ah ahm terribly sorry, madame, I don't do 'eckling".
It's all I could think of saying, because if they're being witty,
let's all share the joke, but I couldn't hear what she was saying.
She gave up, because most people were paying attention, so it went
away. Christchurch was a little more reserved, but they joined in.
GB: I don't know what was wrong with the Auckland one…perhaps
it was the whole Chris Knox thing. He plays a lot of Orientations,
so perhaps…
NI: 150 people, 150 tickets and they've all
gone. So he thought they'd taken the tickets, and then not come.
There probably weren't more than about 40 people.
GB: Well, perhaps there was something really interesting on television…
NI: The cricket!
GB: It was the cricket!
GB: I've been reading a couple of books and no-one seems to agree
how old you are.
NI: Fifty-seven.
GB: Oh, so you were born in 1944.
NI: Last time I saw Eric he said "I've
just been reading a book…I didn't know you were 60!" I
said 'I'm not bloody 60!" It's some book on Pythons and thing
s like that.
GB: Aren't you glad I didn't ask any questions about the Pythons?
NI: (mock-gruffly)Yeah, well, they're boring,
they're past it.
GB: You had a couple of digs at John Cleese.
NI: I thought it was a lovely letter! I've
never said that story before. I've always had this problem with
poetry, if someone's got something to say, why don't you just come
straight out and say it? Which is so barbaric, with no understanding
of the poetic process at all.
GB: Just be glad I didn't ask you, what do you think of New Zealand,
because everyone asks that just after you get off the plane.
NI: Yeah, I know, it happened to me. But it
reminded me of what English television used to be like, when you
get the big Hollywood star being asked "what do you think of
England?" It's almost like saying "Do you like us? Say
something nice about us"
GB: Imagine that with 150 years of general insecurity and you've
got a pretty good description of the New Zealand psyche.
NI: I do like it, because I live out in the
country in England anyway, and people do spend the time of day.
Anywhere you go here, you can have a natter with someone.
GB: So how much longer are you here in Wellington for?
NI: Oh, we leave tomorrow.
GB: You should go to the Botanical Gardens.
NI: Well, we've been doing just about every
Botanical Garden. We've only got to go to Palmerston North, so we
might have a look.
YVONNE INNES: We're going to the Man- the
Manuwe
PB: Manuwera Gardens.
GB: Ours is nicer.
